Jazz Advice

We get questions all the time on how to go about transcribing. Often, the people that write in say that they tried transcribing, but it just didn’t work for them, or it was just too hard. Yes, transcribing is not easy, but the problem does not lie in the inherent difficulty of this activity, but in the selection and approach by the practitioner.

The way to start transcribing is by starting small. You needn’t tackle a full solo or even a full chorus. No reason to be intimidated. It’s a much easier process than you might think.

Finding something to transcribe

When you get in your car, what jazz album do you grab? Who do you listen to when you get home from work? What player do you wish you sounded like the most? The answers to these simple questions will tell you who you should transcribe.

If your answers are all modern players, then you need to do some homework. Rather than jumping to transcribe them, figure out where they came from. Read interviews, ask your friends, listen more closely. Who influenced them and helped them become the player they are today?

Despite what you may think, they stole language and built upon it just as you’re doing. Mark Turner strikes me as one of the most innovative musicians around today. He sets himself apart from many other tenor players, playing with his own sound and concept that varies greatly from the norm.

But in this New York Time … Read More

So you’ve transcribed some lines and you’re learning them in all keys. You’ve even started to apply them to tunes you’re working on, but after several weeks, the line you transcribed which started out as sounding magical to you, now sounds boring. And on top of that, you’re playing that same line everywhere.

Don’t fret. If you’re familiar with this described situation, you’re on the right track. However, it’s at this point that most people stop.

Once you’re comfortable with the line in all keys and are using it in your playing, it’s time to take the line to the next level: transitioning the line from a simple and uncreative cut-and-paste-element, to something you truly own. Something that inspires your creativity within. It’s time to make it your own.

Making a line your own

“The creative act does not create something out of nothing. It uncovers, selects, reshuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, ideas, faculties, [and] skills.”Arthur Koestler

Copying a line from one of your heroes and reproducing it is just a starting point to learning the jazz language. The goal: to hear, understand, and build upon these lines, combining them with other lines and concepts to produce something your own.

Making lines begins just from playing them over and over. There are some lines I’ve learned that sound completely different when I play them than when I listen to the original source of where they came from. These differences are the result of my sound, articulation, time concept, … Read More

The ii V progression makes up the vast majority of chord changes within the jazz standard repertoire. Much of our success or failure as improvisors comes from being able to navigate this deceptively simple progression.

Learning how to play over ii Vs is actually much easier than you think. The mistake most people make is they try to play over them using theoretical knowledge instead of utilizing language and their ear. You’ll notice that in this article I won’t be talking about 7 to 3 resolutions, dorian & mixolydian scales, or anything in that vein.

These types of things are excellent points of theory to know, but in reality provide little help compared to the knowledge you’ll gleam from transcribing. Use theory to supplement what you learn from studying how the music sounds.

Get ii V language

Everything starts with a model. Observing a definitive way of how to do something.

Listen to one of your heroes on a tune you know the chord changes to. Take note of where all the ii Vs occur in the tune. Focus in on those areas and listen for a line that grabs your fancy. If you have a program like Transcribe, loop the line and listen to it carefully to make sure it’s something you genuinely like. Do not neglect how important this is.

Many people have been writing in lately about who they should transcribe, asking specifically for us to tell them what solos and what musicians they should … Read More

Let’s face it.

As improvising musicians, we’ve become obsessed with notes.

Obsessed with harmony, chords, and scales. Which scales to use over which chord progressions, which diminished scales to play over dominant chords, how to play “outside,” how to play “inside,” which chords can be substituted for others…We even reduce entire sounds, full of infinite sonorities, down to measly scales: “Oh, G7 #9, you just gotta play an altered scale, works every time!”

Even when we get on the right track and begin to transcribe solos from our favorite records, it can be easy to forget that we’re looking for more than just the notes. It’s through this process of imitation that we absorb the styles of our heroes and begin to create our own sound, but this involves much more than simply determining the pitches in a solo or conducting a theoretical analysis.

Looking beyond the notes

Countless transcription books have reduced entire solos down to mere shadows of what the recording presents. The actual pitches of the solo are only one piece of the valuable information available on the record. You can get the notes from the page, but what about the articulation, time, tone, touch, volume, accents, feel, idiomatic effects, or other “intangibles” of the solo that can’t be represented in print?

It’s hidden within these intangibles that you’ll find the true musicality of the solo. The subtle aspects of expression that make it personal, intriguing, and emotional. The daring excitement of Elvin, McCoy and Jimmy Garrison … Read More

Rhythm is often thrown to the wayside, in favor of working on harmony and melody. Perhaps this disregard is caused by a lack of understanding about how to approach this aspect of improvisation. Here’s a simple and effective process to find and incorporate new rhythms into your playing.

Step 1: Choose a chorus

You’ll need a chorus from a solo. Throughout the article I’ll use the first chorus of Miles Davis soloing on “So What” to illustrate the concepts discussed. Pick something that’s at a medium tempo, where the soloist plays distinct phrases with clear and interesting rhythmic ideas. Solos of Miles are perfect candidates.

Step 2: Transcribe the rhythms

When you transcribe, you do not want to write the solo down as you’re learning it. If I write a solo down, it will often be months after I’ve internalized the entire solo and can play it flawlessly. You always want to make sure you’re not depending on a written copy of the solo to remember it or to play it; you’re writing the solo down to strengthen your ability to notate what you hear and to analyze it more closely.

In this exercise you actually will write down what you’re transcribing as you do it because your reasons for transcribing are highly specific: to identify each rhythm the soloist uses, understand them, notate them, and integrate them into your playing. You’re not trying to learn language. You’re not worried about the melodic or harmonic components. All you’re concerned with … Read More

On this site we’ve talked about transcribing numerous times. From the reasons you should be transcribing solos to the best method of transcription…even to the different definitions of transcription for jazz musicians. Knowing why you’re transcribing and how to do it are vital to improving as an improviser.

The most important aspect of the transcription process, however, is what you do with that language once you’ve figured out the notes by ear.

There is an attitude among some musicians and educators that you must transcribe as many solos as possible in order to improve. More is better. If you’ve transcribed two solos, you need to do ten; if you’ve transcribed ten, you need to hurry up, get your act together and do twenty.

When you get down to it, great leaps in knowledge can truly be accomplished through one transcription. Simply transcribing as many solos as you can and quickly moving on to the next won’t guarantee success and is likely overwhelm and frustrate you. Sure, you are transcribing a lot, but are you absorbing any of the language that you’re pulling from the records?

Less is more

It’s a simple idea: If you need language (ii-V’s, longer lines, etc.), you need to transcribe solos, but the belief that you’ll dramatically improve by transcribing a ton of solos is misguided. To see improvement, you actually need to develop the language you’re transcribing, not just mechanically figuring out notes and moving on to the next solo.

The transcription process is … Read More

After hours spent practicing technique: endless articulation, tone, range, and fingering exercises, are you still not matching up to what you’re hearing on your favorite records? Are those same étude books and exercises you’ve been working on for years still not cutting it?

It can be very discouraging when you don’t see any improvement in your improvising and technique even though you’ve been diligently practicing exercises designed to make you better. The problem is not that you’re practicing exercises to improve, but rather that the content of your practice routine isn’t matching your goal of what you want to sound like.

If you want to sound like your favorite musician, why are you relying on études and exercises out of books to get you there? Learn the technique from the source. This is not to say that you should abandon crucial practice on your instrument for tone, fingering, articulation, etc., but if you are relying solely on these sources to reach your goal, you’re going to be working for a very long time.

Transcribe for technique

Everyone talks about transcribing to learn lines and copying language from the greats, but one invaluable benefit that is often overlooked is the advance in technique that goes hand-in-hand with learning solos by ear. Think back to the last solo that you transcribed. After learning the solo and playing it along with the record, did you notice that you had more technique or were able to play in a way that you were unable … Read More

Have you ever wondered why great pianists, guitarists, bassists, and drummers often sing along as they improvise? Ever noticed how many of the best horn players also happen to be great singers? Great musicians all over, seem to have developed the ability to sing somewhere along the way, whether they’ve had formal training or not. For all of us, from the musical innovator to the weekend music lover, singing is a natural part of musical development and artistic expression. The voice is in fact our first instrument and one that everyone can play. For serious musicians, though, the voice is a crucial part of our technique and one that can always be improved upon.

One concept that is not often talked about, yet immensely important, is the gap between our ears and what is coming out of our instruments. The fact is that what is easily understood aurally, rarely is translated to our instruments without any work. Internalizing this music takes hours of repeated listening and imitation until it finally appears in our day to day playing. As improvisers, we rely heavily on our ears to hear the music going on around us, but this is only a small part of developing our ears to their full potential. The real skill comes not in simple identification of intervals and chords, but in the ability to recreate what we hear instantaneously – singing.

Singing a musical idea naturally creates a strong physical connection between our ears and the sounds that we’re … Read More

tran•scribe

transitive verb

a: to make a written copy of

b: to make a copy of (dictated or recorded matter) in longhand or on a machine

c: to paraphrase or summarize in writing

d: to represent (sound) by means of phonetic symbols

This is the definition I found for the word transcribe when I looked it up in the Merriam-Webster dictionary recently. I was curious to get to the bottom of what transcribing actually meant, a word that I had heard for years as I was learning to improvise. Since I became interested in jazz, transcribing solos was continuously touted as the “secret” to learning improvisation. Jazz musicians and educators constantly talked about transcribing solos, tunes, and lines, but it seemed that there was a conflict in what was actually meant by the word transcribe, as well as the reason behind doing it.

Throughout the years, I’ve met amazing improvisers that claimed they’ve never transcribed a solo and have come across others that say they’ve transcribed hundreds of solos. I’ve had teachers that didn’t write solos down, but had numerous solos memorized to the point where they could sing and finger through them without their instruments. On the other hand, I’ve encountered players that had dozens of solos written down, but didn’t seem to retain any of it or improve by doing so. So who is right and why are there so many discrepancies if everyone is “transcribing”?

Even though we may not always believe … Read More

A reader recently wrote in the following question:

I used to play classical guitar, then stopped for a couple of years, and am now trying to teach myself jazz guitar. Here’s the thing:  I’m a college student.  Between classes, homework, and work,  it’s hard to get in practice time.  What would you recommend working on the most if I only have maybe 30-45 minutes a day? Sometimes it’s difficult knowing where to start/what to do…

I think most people can relate to this reader’s question. Being crunched for time is just how it is these days. Not to worry. You can still make huge positive leaps in your playing with very little time.

Scope and depth

The concept of scope and depth relates to how broad and deep a selection of anything may be. With regards to practicing, scope has to do with how many topics we choose to cover during any given practice session and depth describes how deeply we study each of these particular topics.

Most people’s practice sessions tend to be broad in scope and shallow in depth. For instance, they’ll attempt to tackle tone exercises, dozens of scales in all keys, five new tunes, and what ever else they can cram into an hour! On top of that, the method they approach each of these topics with may be completely inefficient. For example, most people tend to learn new tunes from play-along recordings as opposed to learning them off the record, or they make one of … Read More